WRITING PROVIDING WOMAN WITH A HAPPY ENDING

Typically, there will be a woman in something flouncy and revealing being gripped by a strapping man. Romance writers refer to these as the "copulating couples" covers.

Zita Christian was relieved to see that the cover of her second published romance novel, "First and Forever," will not be one of those when it comes out in November.

Her main characters, Justin and Katrina, will be shown leaning against one another -- but not too close -- in a field of wheat in front of a windmill, just as her story describes the fictional couple's 19th- century prairie homestead.

The 46-year-old author prides herself on writing novels that have as much history as romance. The book is loosely based on the lives of Christian's grandparents, who met when her grandmother was a maid in the house of her grandfather and who later moved to South Dakota while the state was still a territory.

For research on the frontier life of her grandparents' time, she spent two weeks in the Western state searching for accounts of pioneer life and soaking up the "sensual images" of the Plains state that she wanted to get into her book.

But the rest of the story is "pure fiction," Christian said Friday. Her inspiration for Katrina, the German-born heroine, was a model in an Avon cosmetics catalog, she said.

She kept the model's picture pinned to the bulletin board in the office she created out of a spare bedroom in the Oak Grove Street condominium she shares with her husband, Richard Christian.

Ten years ago, after collecting piles of publishers' rejection letters from her short stories and novels, she joined a romance novel writer's group based in Vernon. Harper Monogram bought her first completed romance novel in 1992 -- June 1, 1992, at 10:20 a.m., to be exact.

Her agent called her at work with the good news. She remembers that she had a cold that day, and between crying for happiness and her runny nose, it was a "beautiful mess."

"All the publishers that turned down "Band of Gold" said it was `too different.' Harper said they wanted it because it was different," Christian said proudly.

Not that Christian is a literary purist when it comes to her writing.

The money is all right, too, she says. So far, her two books have earned her a "one-comma income," she says, meaning somewhere between $1,000 and $999,999 -- she won't get any more specific.

But, her goal is a "two-comma income," which would put her in the millionaire category. She knows it's possible; two of her friends from the writers' group already have earned millions from their romance books.

While romance publishers are beginning to respond to their changing audiences -- encouraging writers to make black and Latin women, and even women over 45, the heroines of some novels -- there is one thing every romance novel, no matter how contemporary, must provide, Christian said.

"The absolute, No. 1 requirement in a romance novel is a happy ending," she said.